


Welcome to Cult Status!

by factorielle



Category: NHK ni Youkoso! | Welcome to the NHK
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-10 22:22:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/104999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/factorielle/pseuds/factorielle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During his years of withdrawal from society, Satou Tatsuhiro hadn't thought much about his years before high school, before senpai and card games and dreadful conspiracies. He'd forgotten many things during that time, he realized later; simple pleasures in life, like overcoming small frustrations or making a stranger smile (not that he'd ever done that much, come to think of it) or running in the street as fast as possible for no other reason than to lose his breath and reach destination wheezing but exhilarated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Welcome to Cult Status!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gleefilled](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gleefilled/gifts).



> Written for Yuletide 2008.

During his years of withdrawal from society, Satou Tatsuhiro hadn't thought much about his years before high school, before senpai and card games and dreadful conspiracies. He'd forgotten many things during that time, he realized later; simple pleasures in life, like overcoming small frustrations or making a stranger smile (not that he'd ever done that much, come to think of it) or running in the street as fast as possible for no other reason than to lose his breath and reach destination wheezing but exhilarated.

The memories had been flooding back lately, now that he could bear to talk to his mother for more than two minutes at a time, being finally able to tell her about his job and girlfriend without uttering more than the occasional (and acceptable) exaggeration on how much he was getting paid and how close he and Misaki-chan had really gotten. Now, as he raced through the streets at top speed, crossing people so fast he barely had time to see their faces and wonder what they might be thinking about him - or hear their comments if they made any- it all came clear in his head, and he could only be thankful for the series of events that had led him to his new life.

The feeling that he might have busted a lung did nothing to curb his excitement when he finally reached the meeting spot, and he thought his voice sounded pretty normal when he raised the two tickets that he'd been holding tight in his fist, and announced "Golden Week has begun, Misaki-chan! We can go to our hot spring trip as planned!"

She didn't answer immediately - didn't even move from her seat on the bench, or look away from the table. He took the opportunity to reacquaint himself with proper breathing, then tried again. "Did you hear me, Misaki-chan?"

Finally she turned to him, her eyes too bright and desperate, and as bad as Satou was with social interactions, he could tell that the week would not be going as planned.  


* * *

"My aunt wanted to be buried in her hometown, so that's where we'll be heading," she explained through barely contained sobs, and saved him the trouble of offering to accompany her by adding that the funeral would be as intimate as possible, involving only close family. They'd then have a reception, which would be the beginning of a full-blown family reunion and, predictably, the beginning of an all-out fight about the inheritance.

They stood there face to face, in the park under the house Satou couldn't stop himself from glancing at; her eyes begged him to comfort her, but once again he couldn't bring himself to do what he knew he was supposed to.

In the end he hugged her briefly, wished her good luck and bid her goodbye until she came back to Tokyo.  


* * *

Dawn found him laying wide awake in bed, still looking at the printout of the hard-earned onsen reservation he'd thought would be the key to finally furthering his relationship with Misaki-chan. Not refundable or exchangeable, of course; for a moment he thought to invite senpai to come with him, before remembering that she was leading the happy life of a young mother, and probably couldn't have a week-long affair without being suspected anyway.

So that was it: now that Misaki-chan was gone, he was left to his own devices, with a week of inactivity in front of him and no food in the flat - she'd been adamant that he would return to a nest of cockroaches if he left even cup ramen laying around. He could sleep the week away, but so far sleep hadn't come at all.

Satou glanced blearily at the rising sun through the window, and rolled out of bed and onto the ground, from where he turned his computer on.

It wasn't like he didn't have experience in occupying his empty time.  


* * *

All the sites he'd bookmarked were gone.

After twenty minutes of automatic forwardings, 'site not found' and '404 error', Satou had to accept the terrible truth: the porn-downloading database he'd so painstakingly built a few months ago was now obsolete, useless.

Which gave him a goal, at least: if he couldn't have a real woman, he could use the week he had to retrain his research skills and gather new porn.

Satou stretched in his seat, cracked his knuckles, opened a can of energy drink, and opened a window to his usual search engine, which he stared at for a few seconds, trying to decide which term he should search for first.

For no good reason that he could think of, his fingers typed "True World" and hit enter.  


* * *

Two hours later, he'd only moved enough to elbow the can out of the way; its content was slowly dripping on the floor, but Satou didn't care, busy as he was clicking every link he could find.

There were sites - fansites, all linking to one another and dedicated to his and Yamazaki's game. Walkthroughs, exhaustive lists of clothes, fanarts of Rei in erotic poses, even fanfictions, but mostly there was a forum; a 300-strong members forum, still thriving months after that disastrous Fuyucomi.

They were famous.

Eventually Satou shook himself and grabbed his phone to dial a number he'd never used, and hadn't so much as looked at in the past few months. They'd lost touch after he hadn't answered Yamazaki's triumphant announcement that the was getting engaged, but his friend needed to know that all these efforts had not been for nothing after all.

He prepared his speech as the phone rang, and opened his mouth as soon as the call reached.

"Hello, this is the Yamazaki household," a voice said - a young woman's voice.

The shock was such that he hung up.

Of course. Yamazaki's girlfriend was living with him now, and answering his phone and he probably had no time or desire to reminisce about the time spent creating an erotic game with his no-good senpai.

Satou sighed, and closed his browser window before leaning back in his chair to stair at the sky through the dirty window.

The phone's ringing almost made him fall to the ground. Hoping against hope that Misaki-chan had found the time to call him, he picked up and tried to use a convincingly enthusiastic voice.

"Why are you prank-calling us so early in the morning, Satou-san?" An irritated voice demanded.

That... was not Misaki-chan.

"Ya-Yamazaki?"

"Of course, it's Yamazaki!" Satou could almost see him rolling his eyes. "Didn't you just call here?"

Satou looked around frantically for a camera or any such suspicious item in his flat. "How do you know that?"

A deep sigh. "We have caller ID even in this place, you know. Anyway, why were you calling?"

Satou glanced at his computer's desktop. "It's nothing."

"_Satou-san_. Why were you calling?" He could be damn pushy, for a kid who'd spent his whole childhood getting bullied by his schoolmates.

"The game..." Satou started, then trailed off. They'd both given up on it a long time ago; how was he supposed to admit that he'd been looking it up after all this time? "It's nothing. It was a wrong number."

Satou hung up without listening to the answer, opened a new browser window, and had already started downloading three different movies when the phone started ringing again.  


* * *

At least he hadn't had any of the caffeinated drink, he thought vaguely an hour later, or he wouldn't have been able to fall asleep at all. Almost spent, he finally tore himself away from the computer to crash on the futon. Exhausted, he half-heartedly tried to get off one more time, but fell asleep before he was through.   


* * *

"Satou-san. Satou-san. SATOU-SAN."

It wasn't the repetition of his name that woke him up, so much as the kicking in his ribs. Satou looked around blearily, and blinked.

Then he shook his head, and blinked again. "Yamazaki?"

It couldn't be, though. It couldn't be... right?

"Why didn't you tell me?" Yamazaki demanded, eyes wide with excitement as he pointed to the computer's screen, where the True World board had been opened again.

Satou thought he'd better remove his hand from his limp cock before he even started having this conversation.  


* * *

"Look! This one says 'playing True World is an experience like no other, that any galge fan should try! It's really the most..."

"hilariously..."

"bad..."

"galge ever.'"

Yamazaki slammed the laptop shut, eyes blazing with a rage Satou had only seen in him when talking about women. "I didn't take the time to look through it properly before I came here, but in the end they're all saying the same thing."

"But then why are there so many sites about it?"

Yamazaki shrugged. "I guess it's a cult hit. None of them think it's any good, but they still like to play it and quote it. From what I've seen, you can't be a part of the eroge subculture unless you've played True World, whether you like it or not."

Satou didn't ask further. Yamazaki's glasses had gone oddly opaque, and Satou had learned not to question him when that happened. It seemed to make sense to him, anyway. Still...

"Wait, how can so many people have played it when we only sold five copies?"

"Those five must have lent them to friends, and then they got ripped and distributed over the internet," Yamazaki told him, opening the laptop again. In a few seconds he was back on the forum, on a thread called "buy and sell". Bypassing all the ads about fan-made dolls and print pictures of Rei, he quickly found a thread offering to sell one of the five original CDs. Another click and he was inside to see the bidding. He went straight to the seventh and last page, scrolled down, and...

"F-f-f-" Satou stammered.

"Forty--" Yamazaki joined in.

"FORTY THOUSAND YEN?"  


* * *

"Satou-san! Even if none of these people have understood the depth of our game, they're still interested in it!"

"Yes!"

"They can laugh all they want, but if several of them are willing to buy the game at even twenty thousand yen, we can make a huge profit!"

"Right!"

"We can probably make even more if we sell some signed copies!"

"Yeah!"

"So, where are the other copies?"  


* * *

It was night-time already - Satou figured he'd slept through the day as Yamazaki made his way to him - but not too late to may a visit to Misaki-chan's house, where the box containing the leftover copies of the game had been stored when he'd moved. He hadn't wanted to keep them around, the physical reminder of a complete failure, and Misaki had promised (signed a contract, in fact) that neither she nor anyone from the household would ever open the box.

"You're going out like that?" Yamazaki asked as Satou was putting on his shoes.

"Sure, why not? What are you waiting for?"

Yamazaki pushed his glasses up his nose. "You've still got gunk on your hand, and you smell like you've spent the past three days jerking off."

Satou frowned and made a show of sniffing himself.

"... I'll go take a shower."  


* * *

After all this time of knowing Misaki, Satou had never even been to her house. Even now they still met at the park most of the time, or at his place if the weather was too bad; occasionally, they went out on outings that could be considered dates. He told his friend as much as they made their way there through empty streets, sipping leisurely from beer cans, and in return got told more than he'd ever wanted to know about the running of the Yamazaki estate and the woman who was preparing herself to do it along with its heir.

He was a guy from the city, after all. What did he care about some field and cows and a peasant girl who'd probably never seen a real car in her life?

"She's really nice," Yamazaki told him, sounding a lot like he was trying to convince himself. "She doesn't like anime at all, but she lets me watch it if I want, so--"

"We're here," Satou interrupted, pushing the doorbell with barely concealed relief.

Yamazaki fell silent, and they waited in the refreshing breeze for a few seconds.

Satou was about to ring again when Yamazaki nudged his arm. "Satou-san. Why is there no light on in the house?"  


* * *

"Is this really a good idea?"

"It can't be helped! They'll all be at that funeral for a week and I have to go back in three days! We have to do this now!"

"Yeah, but is _this_ really a good idea?" Satou wheezed, still trying to push Yamazaki up and over the fence. They hadn't even aimed for 'stylish' in their attempt at breaking into the Nakahara garden, and had given up on 'dignified' about five minutes ago - Satou wasn't sure what part of Yamazaki he was pushing at, but it certainly wasn't his foot anymore.

"Shut up and push harder, Satou-san!"  


* * *

The surprisingly tough obstacle presented by the fence finally passed, remained the problem of getting into the house itself. Despite everything anime and doramas had taught them, no easily accessible window had been left unlocked, no back door was ajar, and they were soon faced with the choice of giving up, or breaking and entering.

"Look! This window looks easy enough, and it can't be seen from the street!

"Right! Misaki-chan will surely understand, and I can pay them back for it once we've sold our game to all those fools!"

The window broke easy enough; it took a few more seconds, on Yamazaki's recommendation, to make sure all the broken glass had fallen on the inside, making passage safe for them.

Yamazaki was barely done squirming inside when Satou heard a soft but determined beeping coming from the entrance.

"Satou-san, is that..."

They glanced at each other, panicked, and sprinted all the way to the entrance of the house, where an inconspicuous white box displayed a countdown in imperturbable digital numbers.

Yamazaki grabbed Satou's arm. "Stop it!" He ordered, his fingers gripping way too tight.

"How am I supposed to stop it?"

"Aren't you dating the girl who lives here? You should have a clue about the code they're using! At least more than me!" Yamazaki reached out and opened the box. "You won't know if you don't try!"

Satou typed in a code at random, eliciting a dangerous-sounding beep. Then, the numbers having been pounded into his head with the threat of fines of millions of yen, he tried Misaki's birthday.

The countdown kept going.

"Satou-san! Concentrate!"

But what was he supposed to do? Four digits to a code, there were so many things it could be and he couldn't possibly be expected to know enough about this household to guess at the code?

The countdown reached six seconds. Yamazaki's fingers were clenched so tight around his arm that he'd be sure to have bruises on the next day.

Lost for lost, Satou decided, he might as well go out with a bang. With barely three seconds left to spare, he input his own birth date, and pressed enter.

The countdown stopped.

"Oh." There was no time to wonder why his birthday had been chosen as the alarm code. Stumbling and fumbling, they made their way to the narrow stairs that led to the attic, and started searching, in the dim light of the lamp Yamazaki had had the presence of mind to bring along.

The attic was surprisingly well organized; it took no time at all to find the one cardboard box on which Satou's name was written in clean kanji.

It took a lot longer, however, to drag away the heavy couch that looked like it had been dropped onto it on purpose.

Still skittish from the adventure with the alarm, they grabbed the box without looking inside, and made their escape the same way they'd come.  


* * *

"Eight disks left intact," Yamazaki contemplated mournfully once they were back at Satou's. "That won't bring us much, but it's still something, right?"

Satou grumbled something, being more interested in dragging his 24-pack of beer from the balcony than in calculating the potential benefit of their expedition. The alarm had been quite a scare; they should have a little comforter, he decided.

Yamazaki had already created an account on the forum, and was skimming over the rules distractedly.

"Oh," he sighed after a few seconds. "You're not allowed to post a new thread until you have a hundred posts in the forums."

"Can't we just make a post in the thread selling one?"

Yamazaki shook his head. "For the best exposure, we should make a new post."

Satou took a swig of beer, offering another can to Yamazaki. "It's going to be a long night."  


* * *

It was. Having their game achieve cult status by a combination of mediocrity and pure chance was bad enough; looking through dozens of posts comparing the board members' favorite plot holes and describing Rei's occasionally creative anatomy required the help of more cans of beer than either of the women in their lives would have thought reasonable for them to drink.

"She just doesn't get it," Yamazaki complained on that very topic after three hours of attempting to find the perfect balance of succinctness and meaning (spam comments were immediately deleted, and it had only taken them half an hour to get reprimanded in a private message by the moderator). "No matter how much I explain, I know she finds it weird that I still like anime. She thinks it's only for children!"

Satou snorted his approval and support of Yamazaki's indignation. "Right! These women, always looking down on us..." He trailed off, posting their 34th comment.

"And nagging! Do you have any idea how much she nags? Are they all like that, do you think?"

"I don't know," Satou hiccupped, "but I remember Yamazaki nagged enough for a dozen wives." Looking back, it didn't seem so bad as it had sometimes, back then.

"That's because Satou-san is as useless as a dozen husbands!" Yamazaki protested, fighting Satou for the mouse. "Can't even make a proper comment on a forum," he added viciously as the fifth notice of one of their comments having been deleted popped on the screen.

"Hey, that was one of yours!"

"What? No!"

"Sure was!"

"I'll show you!"  


* * *

Truth be told, the news that the alarm had been tripped had come as a relief to Misaki, who had not been anticipating the family reunion with much enthusiasm. Offering to go back home and see what had happened had hardly been a sacrifice; anyway, she'd been worried about Satou-kun.

She dropped by his place before even going home, carrying a large bento from the convenience store of the station.

Walking in with the ease of someone used to navigating any mess, she almost tripped up over a pair of feet, and looked down to find Yamazaki in a fetal position on the ground, hugging a can of beer to his chest. Next to him, Satou-kun was in a similar position, minus the can and plus a trail of drool down his mouth.

Above them, the computer screen shone bright, and she let curiosity lead her way to read the open page.

_ur a moron_

everyone nows their R only 5 real copies of True World. Ur not the 1st idiot tryin 2 sell fake copy, so we can tell. GTFO ANd don't come back, n00b

There were more comments to the post, but the first one had been enough to alleviate her curiosity, and make her decide to leave it be until they were able to sustain a conversation.

Misaki sighed and laid out the bento on the table. By the look of it, they hadn't had any food here in the past day, and even if it was only a meal for one, it should tide them over whenever they woke up.


End file.
